Monday, February 24, 2020

All Roads Lead to... (Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition)

It was my baby's fourth birthday on the weekend. Does it make me sound old to say that I can't believe how fast the time has gone? It was a very fun, teddy bear themed birthday weekend, but Sunday night ended with Logan and Jenn (brother- and sister-in-law) staying after the kids were in bed. Logan and Sharayah got into a deep conversation, so I looked through the games they brought and forced Jenn to teach me one of their newer ones.

railroad ink deep blue edition board game
We played three games of Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition. This one came out in 2018, one of the avalanche of roll'n'write games that have been coming in the last few years. I'm all for this particular avalanche - most of the games I've played in this genre I've really enjoyed! Railroad Ink was no different. It's easy to learn, seems simple to teach, but was difficult to master!

Every round, four dice are rolled (in the base game). They'll have a variety of paths containing train tracks or roads or a combination of both. Some might be turns, some might be intersections, some might be overpasses, some might be switches (from track to road or vice versa). You can see all of the possible dice rolls at the top of the picture below. You also have a choice of some bonus intersections (which I happened to cut off in the picture below). You can use up to three of these per game, but only one per round.
railroad ink deep blue edition board game
This is the player board where you map out your rails and roads. Each round you must use each of the paths from the four dice and add them to your board. There are twelve exits marked with a big red arrow on the sides of the board. If you can connect these with paths, you score points. If you managed to connect them all in one giant interconnected rail/road combination, you score a whipping 45 points (see the scoring guide on the picture above). 

You also score points for longest rail, longest road, and for filling in as many of the middle nine square as possible (this square is marked with a red outline around it). Be careful of dead ends though - any paths that don't connect to another path or exit off the board cost you  points. You can see that on my sixth round I got creative with two turns in the bottom right and left corners. I couldn't add these road piece anywhere, so I started and stopped them at the edge. They didn't connect to any of the red arrows, so they didn't get me points, but they didn't lose me any points either. Whoever scores the most points, wins.

The Deep Blue Edition comes with two little expansions that can be played alone or separately. In the picture above we added the two dice for the rivers expansion (these are my dark paths on the board). You score points for your longest river, gaining bonus points if you can have it begin and end on the edge of of the board. Dead ends count for the rivers as well. The other mini expansion (which we also tried out) has you making a lake or lakes on your board (with two other dice). You score points for your smallest lake (how many tiles it encompasses) and if the lake is attached to a rail/road, it connects to every other rail/road also connected to the lake. Each of the three games (base game, rivers, and lakes) played very differently and relied on different strategies. There is also a Blazing Red Edition that comes with two mini expansions that I know nothing about but would like to play.

As I mentioned before, I'm thoroughly enjoying the spread of roll'n'write games that have come out. This was a fun little one too, and I'd like to get it to the table again!

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